i have a 90' camaro rs, 305 TBI. yesterday me and my dad changed my intake manifold gasket, well, once we were done we went to crank it and BUZZZZZZ!!!!!! (then some somke) no crank. my air cleaner base shorted the wire that goes to the coil. now when i turn my key nothing happens, (Literally NOTHING.) my headlights come on if i turn them on but thats about it. im guessing its a fusable link. i need help to find out where theyre located. i DID search but didnt find what i needed. i found out i have 7 fusable links.i cant find where they are. any help would be Greatly appreciated. Thanks In Advance!

 

I had a couple of fusible links on my car to the right of the brake booster.

 

THey should all be connected to the starter, or to the power distribution block down low between radiator and battery.

 

Yup, I believe that's where the one in question is...

There are 2 big red wires that feed battery toward the passenger compartment. The load inside the car is divided roughly in half between them. The headlight switch, and a bunch of accessories, are on one; the ignition switch and some other stuff are on the other. Sounds like the one feeding the ign sw got nailed.

 

UPDATE: thanks guys! it WAS the fusable links going to the starter i believe there was 2 or 3 that were Toasted BIG time. we snipped them added new wires and and O shaped connectors so they would fit on the stud to the starter. got them all back in that plastic wire protector, hooked it up, turned the key, and VROOOOOMMMM!!!!!!! aw man that feeling was the greatest. i was pretty depressed that when i finally fixed my intake manifold gasket, i screwed something else up and it was worse then my original problem! lol but im sure those wouldve went soon anyway, those wires was in bad shape. once again THANK YOU. my car is back at 100%!!

 

ohh and BEFORE we figured it was a fusable link we replaced the ign switch hoping it would be the problem, even though it wasent, i guess it dosent hurt to have a new one, seeing as how mine was original and was in bad shape too

 

The favorite way those links seem to fail, is for their insulation to wear or melt through, and they short to that little metal tube they go through for protection, and thereby blow themselves. Has happened to me a couple of times, on a couple of different cars, including my 3rd gen.

Which fortunately, it happened while I was just kinda driving down the road one night, just all the sudden out of the clear blue (cloudy dark gray, actually...), and fortunately, I had a VOM so I could discover that about half of the "batt" stuff in the car was dead, and a couple of alligator clip leads that were big enough to jump between a couple of "batt" points in the fusebox, to give the dead half of the system some batt, and I was on enough of a hill to get up enough speed to start the car back up without having to use the starter (the solenoid load probably would have burned my clip lead in half!!). That got me home, and from there, it was an easy fix of course.

 

It's good to replace those. The link for my cooling fan went when I was driving to school one day. I got out of the car and saw smoke coming from under my hood. Opened it up and there was actually an open flame. The link started my cooling fan relay on fire. The relay was 20.00 or so but the wiring harness was 59.99!

Fusible links are stupid. Whenever I've found one I've put in a real in line fuse